Drain tape heater smell of burning help!!

[Contactor]

Hello :p

Fitted a new drain heater today on the outside of a copper pipe and lagged the whole lot in armaflex.

Returned home and had a call from the customer to say there was a smell of burning inside the cold room.

Would anyone like to comment or have any experience of these causing a problem.

It's an isoline 40w/m x 3m (120w total) red tape heater with rubber coating. This replaces a 40w /m x 3m tape heater, the only differences being that the original one was of the made to measure variety and was braided (used for earth).

Can anyone explain the difference between a tape heater of the self limiting variety and the non-self limiting variety.

Thanks.

[Latte]

Never use external tapes as they get damaged too easily, always use internals and never use armaflex with them as i find they overheat and burn out if you do

[chilliwilly]

Did you adjust the trace heating controller or is it fully automatic?

[Latte]

forgot to ask, is it on permenantly or when defrost on/off ?

[Contactor]

It's permanently wired and the feed from the controller aslo supplied the door heater and the air vent heater. I didn't make any changes because I presumed that it would be fine due to the wattage and length being the same.

Spoke to the customer this morning and the smell has gone, so it's either burnt out or it was just the new heater and armaflex getting to know each other.

Thanks.

[indiandairy]

Never use external tapes as they get damaged too easily

[taz24]

Hello :p

Fitted a new drain heater today on the outside of a copper pipe and lagged the whole lot in armaflex.

Returned home and had a call from the customer to say there was a smell of burning inside the cold room.

Would anyone like to comment or have any experience of these causing a problem.

It's an isoline 40w/m x 3m (120w total) red tape heater with rubber coating. This replaces a 40w /m x 3m tape heater, the only differences being that the original one was of the made to measure variety and was braided (used for earth).

Can anyone explain the difference between a tape heater of the self limiting variety and the non-self limiting variety.

Thanks.

Externaly wrapped tapes should never overlap because they will get too hot and burn out.
As long as they do not overlap it hopfully was the thing bedding down.

No way of knowing untill you look.

All the best

taz

.

[mbreward]

Hi Contactor

A self limiting tape will increase it's resistance and reduce it's wattage as the temperature increases, this will "self limit" the tape temperature to prevent overheating.

non self-limiting tapes do not have this feature

I hope that that helps

Mark